Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport. If you're an elected official, political operative or anyone else upset at his views, don't go bothering LSUS or LSU System officials about that because these are his own views solely.
This publishes five days weekly with the exception of 7 holidays. Also check out his Louisiana Legislature Log especially during legislative sessions (in "Louisiana Politics Blog Roll" below).

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23.4.15

Even as the announcement
serves as a scare tactic, the possibility that the Louisiana State University
System and perhaps others higher education systems or institutions in the state
could declare partial or entire financial exigency could pave the way to
helpful changes – or simply make the problem worse.

LSU System Pres. and LSU Chancellor
F. King Alexander announced that the system’s Baton Rouge campus was putting
together plans for financial exigency, a condition that allows an institution
greater latitude in making decisions about programs or personnel as a result of
adverse financial conditions. By way of example,
the LSU System receives such authorization from its Board of Supervisors for
any of the entire system, institutions within it, or academic units within an
institution, after an institution’s leader consults with the faculty and
petitions. This allows, for example, for a school to furlough, lay off, or even
terminate contracts with faculty members prior to these ending or in the case
of tenured individuals to bypass other for-cause requirements for their
discharge.

Of course, Alexander did not have
to tell the world that he had asked the institution to begin drawing up such plans,
so that served as a public relations move more than anything else (affirming
this primarily was a scare tactic by adding “We don't say that to scare
people”). He piled on with the imaginary terrors by stating “You'll never get
any more faculty” if declaring exigency and lamenting that, at budgeted levels
without changes in current revenue-raising capacity for the state of which the
Legislature is trying to alter, the taxpayer portion per LSU undergraduate student
would drop to $660.

22.4.15

Maybe it’s that state Rep. Brett Geymann
doesn’t get around much. Or perhaps he’s just incredibly thin-skinned.
Regardless, if the attitude he displays regarding arguments against opposition
to the Common Core State Standards Initiative stands in for the prevalent
thinking of those agreeing with him on that issue, this discredits altogether opposition
to Common Core.

Earlier this week, Geymann tried a
parliamentary maneuver that would have sent a bill of his that would negate the
use of CCSSI standards in Louisiana schools directly to the House floor. Common
Core is a compendium of learning objectives put together by state officials and
educators the outcomes of which are designed to be measurable by a common
instrument. Critics maintain that specification of standards must lead to standardized
content out of control of states, that the standards are too hard or too lenient,
and that these are driven by conspiratorial forces.

The House rebuffed his attempt,
which Geymann explained was motivated by a recent lobbying effort by a
pro-Common Core group that placed pink stuffed unicorn toys on legislators’
desks with the tagged inscription “Unicorns are not real. And neither are most
of the things you’ve heard about Common Core.” This greatly
perturbed Geymann, who emoted through a press release that “This is the
most distasteful thing I have seen in my entire career as a public servant.” He
also clarified
by alleging that the interest group stunt that was “mocking” opponents thusly making
parents think the usual process of going through the relevant committee before
floor consideration was rigged against them, and hence the extraordinary step
that until then never had been taken under the current Constitution of trying to
bypass a committee.

21.4.15

The confusion and arrogance expressed
in state Rep. Walt
Leger’s recent opinion
piece in the New Orleans
Times-Picayune against HB 707,
which would prohibit state government coercion against service deliverers who
make decisions to engage in commerce on the basis of their views about marriage,
illustrate the bill’s necessity.

His error begins at the most
fundamental level by conjuring an equivalency between protections granted in
the U.S. Constitution based upon a person’s immutable characteristics, such as
race and sex, and a person’s behavior, such as expressions of homosexuality
that would include the notion that a marriage between people of the same sex is
blessed by God. The Constitution protects people for what they are, not how
they choose to behave, with the two exceptions of behavior extending from
political belief and religious belief – the latter exactly the point of the
bill.

Confusion reigns elsewhere in
Leger’s screed. He claims that existing law would provide adequate protection
against discrimination against religious belief, but does not seem to
understand that the government actions the bill seeks to enjoin as a result of
exercise of religion concern matters of state government regulation not otherwise addressed. He also inaccurately distorts the permitted invocation of conscience
as a cause for concern far beyond its extremely narrow zone of views on
marriage.

20.4.15

If Gov. Bobby
Jindal wishes to continue to put himself on a path to a run for the White
House in 2016 and to promote good state policy simultaneously, there’s
something he can get behind in the area of foreign policy during the Louisiana
Legislature’s current regular session that’s good for both the state and
country.

Just as the prefiling period for session
bills came to an end, Pres. Barack Obama
declared victory in getting any deal negotiated between the United States and
several other prominent states and Iran described as a means by which to
constrain its nuclear ambitions. Great debate has ensued, with almost all
Republican, but also including some Democrat, national lawmakers noting the
framework’s inability to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weaponry, which
stays consistent with Obama’s
overall foreign policy thinking.

As a result, some states’
legislatures have decided to pursue
passing laws akin to those already existing in several other states that
require divestment in any enterprise that deals with Iran and/or barring these
from state contracts. Even if the federal
government lifted sanctions, it can do nothing constitutionally about states’
decisions on where to invest their money and with whom to do business.

19.4.15

While there are many really, really
bad lawyer jokes out there, that could be the worst of them. Unfortunately, one
member of the Louisiana bar appears to be living up to that stereotype as
taxpayers get fleeced for some high
living off the hog by the Louisiana
State Law Institute, an appendage of the Legislature that has acted as the official
law revision commission, law reform agency, and legal research agency of
Louisiana since the 1930s.

I write “appears” stereotypical because
it’s possible the guy in question, the longtime executive director of the
organization William Crawford, simply may have horrendous research skills –
although that seems highly doubtful given his considerable academic
accomplishments (having been a law professor at Louisiana State University’s
Paul M. Hebert School of Law for nearly half a century). That’s because he was
asked by a Baton Rouge Advocate
reporter about the Institute’s penchant for having meetings in New Orleans,
even though it is headquartered at LSU, which have cost more than $500,000 over
the past three years; specifically, why didn’t meetings of its council, which has over 100 members,
occur where it is housed? About a third of its members live in the greater New
Orleans area, while almost as many live in the Baton Rouge area.

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